I opened my eyes to the depressing sight of my dimly lit room. A small community of cups and bottles littered my desk, a mountain of pizza boxes was piled in the corner of the room and the floor was no longer visible under the sea of dirty clothes. I slowly lifted my head to peer into the black computer screen that was staring back at me. Did I really fall asleep on my keyboard again?

I brought my fingers up to the side of my face. My mechanical keyboard had left red marks on my cheek, reflecting the keys I had been napping on for the past several hours. My blonde hair was so messy it could have been mistaken for a bird's nest. Any normal person would panic seeing themselves so disheveled, but it didn't bother me in the slightest. I didn't get out much these days after all.

I illuminated my dark room as I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket. I ignored the missed calls from my mother to check the time. Eleven o'clock AM. I let out a large sigh and sank back into my desk chair. I promised myself I would stop staying up all night, but it looked like my online friends got the best of me once again.

I could tell by the way that they talked to me, that my parents and my ex-classmates thought I lived a horrible life. It's been a couple months since I dropped out of college and ever since I've been shut in my room with very little face to face contact with the few people I know. Even when I do recognize someone, they always told me the same things. They always mentioned how I needed to get more sunlight or how I should meet new people, but through their subtle cues, I understood what they really meant: Stop playing videogames.

I turned my monitor back on and started up my PC, shaking my head. What my classmates and family were missing was the second part of me. They never took the opportunity to see me when I came alive, when I could do impossible things that defied all expectation. They never saw me play Fortnite.

I opened the Epic Games launcher on my computer and typed in the username that I made famous: The_Fated. I kept the same alias I had in the Fortnite alpha. In many ways, I felt that this name carried more weight than the one that my parents gave me. In the real world, I felt that I was riding life on narrow tracks. Go to decent school, get an above-average job, get married to someone that won't drive you crazy and then work and work until you eventually retire. I grew afraid of a mundane and scripted life. When I chose my screen name, I fantasized about becoming something more than what was laid out for me. I was going to make sure when I logged into a game, I would not go unnoticed.

I loaded up Fortnite and was treated to the colorful array of season five characters. A wave of nostalgia rushed over me as I recounted the fleeting, but blissful moments I had while playing the game. Every second I spent running through the rolling hills of Lazy Links, every tree I harvested in Dusty Divot, and every crushing defeat I faced after dropping into Tilted Towers made the following Victory Royale feel even more incredible than the last. Even when I wasn't playing, I could simply think about my next time falling out of the battle bus and I would feel a euphoria that I never felt before playing Epic Games' masterpiece.

Suddenly, there was a knock on my door that nearly made me fell out of my chair.

My mind started to race as to who could it possibly be. My rent wasn't due for at least another week, so it couldn't have been the landlord… No one from my old college knew where I was living these days, so not them either… My eyes widened in horror when I came to my third alternative. My parents must have driven all the way to Los Angeles to come see me.

I scrambled for my phone and turned it off before they could call me another time. The only way I'd be able to make them leave if they thought I wasn't home. I had to stay completely silent and began to preemptively create an alibi for myself as to where I could be. After all, if I never picked up the phone, how could they possibly know that I'd be home? My blinds are shut, and my lights were off. They'd be out of my hair in no time. All I had to do was to kick back and not make any noise.

I let out a deep breath through my nose before I cautiously glanced over my friends list, smirking when my eyes met the name 'Godshot.' Him and I weren't friends per se, I would instead describe us as being a part of a symbiotic relationship. He was emotional when he played games, when he was losing, I could hear him hitting his desk and keyboard while spewing profanity. Alternatively, if we ever won a match, he would pop out of his chair and begin to cheer. It was due to these swings in personality that made Godshot, or "G" as I nicknamed him, hard to get along with but we still played Fortnite together every day for the last six months. We never acknowledged it when we spoke over voice chat, but we were both the best players we knew. There were other people who I'd rather play with for sure, but none of them had the raw talent that G had.

Another pounding thud on my door ceased my rumination. My heart threatened to escape my ribcage for putting it through this amount of stress. I took my hands off my keyboard and wrapped them around myself to stop my nervous shaking. The knock was even louder than the first, it must have been my father. He must have come to my apartment to finally cut my allowance off and send me out into the cold. I knew that this day would come, but not this soon. I thought I'd be able to figure something out before it all came to this, find a way to make enough cash so I didn't have to face the conversation that now waited on my doorstep.

I dared not turn my head as my locked door was ruthlessly forced open by my visitor. The hinges screamed as the door hit the other side of the wall it was attached to and a tall man wearing a dark blue suit stepped into my apartment.

My veins became visible through my pale skin. My door was knocked down, but I wasn't brave enough to face the intruder. I stared at floor as I felt my head begin to rush from my hyperventilation. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man walk towards me and I noticed he wasn't my father, as I first presumed. He could have been a robber, a murderer, a psychopath! I should have been on my hands and knees begging for my life, but in the few precious moments I had before he reached me, I couldn't do a thing. I was frozen in place by my own anxiety. My limbs felt congested with how much blood was passing through them. I was wheezing and gasping for air, prolonging the panic-attack that now assumed control of my body. I couldn't even look the stranger in the face as he raised a metallic object and struck me over my head with it. I collapsed into the dirty laundry on my floor and my world slowly faded into a murky black.

My head was spinning when I awoke from my coma. I was no longer in my room. I was instead greeted with blaring music and flashing strobe lights of bright colors which both assaulted my senses. Squinting, I looked around to assess my new surroundings. There were several rows of seats, separated by one open isle in the middle. The room that I was seated in was small and surrounded by windows. Windows that showed a clear blue sky with only several wisps of clouds passing me by. The clouds were moving quickly, too quickly in fact. I realized the wind couldn't possibly the only thing pushing them and then I came to my chilling epiphany.

It wasn't the clouds that were moving quickly, it was me.

I tried to stand up, but my hands were bound with metal casps to the seat that I occupied. I looked to my side to see a bald, tan-skinned man in his early twenties sleeping beside me. He sported large tribal tattoos that decorated his exposed arms. He wore a dark green vest and a lighter-green scarf wrapped around his neck. A pair of belts wrapped around his waist and his pants had a desert camouflage design, with a square of mis-matched grey fabric sewn above his left knee. I recognized the outfit almost immediately. The person sitting next to me was dressed head-to-toe in a Fortnite default skin cosplay.

I looked down at my own clothes, only to learn that my kidnappers had removed my old clothes and put me into the same trademark get-up as the man beside me. As I started to grow accustomed to the intermediate blasts of light coming from the ceiling, I could squint my eyes and make out that everyone around me, no matter what body type they were, were all fitted into the same clothing.

Everything started to fall into place. The flashing lights, the loud repetitive music, the clouds passing by the windows and the way everyone was dressed. I was riding through the sky on a battle bus. The same one that I dropped out of countless times when I played Fortnite.

I couldn't help but grin. There was no way that what I was seeing was real. I scratched my thumb with my index finger as a test if I was dreaming. Unfortunately, I could still feel my fingernail against my skin, which left only one other possibility in my head. Whoever knocked me unconscious must have drugged me afterword.

I raised my brow as I glanced back over to the tattooed guy next to me. So, was this a real person or just on object that I think is a person? Still bound to my seat, I leaned over to him, giving the man a light nudge with my shoulder, "Hey, wake up big guy!" I said, practically yelling to be heard over the booming music, "I need to figure something out!"

The stranger bolted his eyes open, straightened his back to sit up perfectly straight and began to shake his head around in every direction. Seeing him so disoriented was a little unsettling, I expected a calm response, but after he looked out the window he was adjacent to, all the color seeped out of his face.

When he finally spoke, his voice was much deeper than expected, "We got to get out of here bro."

"You mean, you see it too?" my voice started to waver.

More people around us started to wake up. I watched their faces as they reacted to dangling thousands of feet in the air. They were just as horrified as I was. Reality started to set in and I realized that this wasn't a drug-induced hallucination. This was real life.

The strobe lights and music shut off suddenly and the battle bus fell completely silent. Without the epileptic flashing, I could make out a tv screen that was mounted on the front windshield of the driverless bus. The screen displayed an old man with a white beard longer than his hairline. He wore a crimson red suit with a darker red vest underneath and a white tie. Over the bus's intercom, we heard him speak to us.

"I am glad everyone has settled down." He said with a dry, raspy voice, "For your own sake, I'd recommend that each of you remain this quiet for a few minutes. I believe you'll want to hear what I have to say."